I've had this sitting on my hard-drive for awhile now but have neglected to upload it due to bugs and lack of polish. The story has went through several revisions since I last posted here and I am pretty happy with how it is turning out. While it is still far from ideal, BRRPG is in a playable enough state for me to post a link to it. What I am posting is not the full game but the first few hours of it. Concerning the full version, it is fully complete except for some of the dialog trees and optional quests I have planned. I'd have had it complete by now, but work and my social life kind of take priority. This is more of a time waster for me.

If any of you game on Windows and have a few hours to kill, you're welcome to hang out with Sergey for a few hours. I hope all of you are having a happy holiday and are enjoying time off from work/school. Later, guys.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Controls:

(Shooting, casting, and blocking with the mouse is strongly encouraged. The keyboard controls may conflict with the mouse controls. I'll have to look into this further.)

DZ -- Art and Play-testing (Title Screen/Suffering through the game's first hideous incarnation)

Cirus -- Conceptualization (Created the premise, started work on the game 8 years ago in RPG Maker but never finished it, inspired this incarnation, being an OG WINNER, etc etc)

Bjorno -- Voice Acting (It's truly WINNER)

Tabula Rasa -- For his thread on the engine001 forums detailing how to create a stat distribution system (I know you don't know me, but you helped out all the same via my lurking)

Sergey Titov -- For creating and producing such outstanding products

Todd Porter and Matti Paalanen -- Music

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A sequel to Big Rigs Over The Road Racing has been in development for years. "Big Rigs Forever AKA Big Rigs RPG" began development over 12 years ago. Yes, you read that right; Stellar Stone started work on the sequel before the first Big Rigs even came out! The developers sensed that their initial concept for Big Rigs would be a smash hit and decided to begin work on Big Rigs Forever early in order to spread themselves out evenly over the gaming market and to maximize profits over a 20 year product cycle.

Sadly, the game can almost be considered vaporware. Set back after set back caused heavy criticism amongst the gaming community; criticism that prompted Stellar Stone's now famous (and often parodied) official response: "It's done when it's done." The chances of Big Rigs Forever ever seeing the light of day have become even bleaker as it has been rumored that GameMill Publishing, Stellar Stone's publisher, has taken steps to sue the Big Rigs developer. Court hearings have outlined GameMill Publishing's case against Stellar Stone as "Repeated gross negligence of important deadlines, failure to meet contractual obligations and, most shockingly, not enough WINNER."

Stellar Stone has reportedly denied the claim of "not enough WINNER" as "defamation of character" and plans to counter-sue. When both developer and publisher were contacted by the gaming press, reporters were given a "no comment" statement with regards to the rumored, though likely, court case. However, Stellar Stone were quick to reassure fans not to worry about Big Rigs Forever by saying:

"Always bet on Big Rigs."

So there you have it; the 12 year saga broken down into three paragraphs. I hope that answers your questions!

Well, I'm not quite sure what I want to do with BRRPG but I do know that as the game stands now, if I was to remove all references to "Rigs" and Sergey, it would just be another generic action-RPG with AD&D influences. The game takes itself pretty seriously and doesn't really contain any overt jokes. I won't do that, of course, but I think I'll wait until I get some inspiration before starting up work on it again. All of Engine001's "JRPG" default dialog is being removed because I want the player to roleplay and actively participate in the story. The JRPG style dialog was only really included because I was still familiarizing myself with the engine and didn't know how to create my own custom dialog system yet.

If I possessed the same experience a year ago, I wouldn't even be making BRRPG in Engine001. I'd be using Unity.

But concerning my old games Shaq Fu RPG and the sequel, I've removed them since I believe that the handful of WINNERS and old gamefaqs lurkers that wanted to play them have already done so. They're the only ones who would understand it, anyway. SFRPG is a part of my childhood that I remember fondly and it's time to let it rest for good.

Hrmm...well, this is really getting to me and I may need some constructive criticism on the setting/gameplay elements of BRRPG. The last thing I want is for my game to be perceived as a rip-off of Barkley:SUAJG. If anyone has suggestions, it would help a lot. I really don't want to stop work on this game because I have literally put thousands of hours into it.

The game isn't cyber-punk and the only "dystopian" area of the game is Stellopolis. The rest of the game (outside of Rigaria--which is a fantasy sci-fi mix like my previous games) takes place in a desert. My game is heavily inspired by Fallout 1 - 2.

A large part of the reason way I didn't recirculate Shaq Fu RPG for years was because of all of the hype Barkley 1 got. Shaq Fu RPG was actually passed around my high school after the dissolution of the SFA and some of my real life friends thought I worked on Barkley which fetched me up (but I got over it once I played Barkley: Gaiden and it actually ended up being really funny).

If the mouse-based combat seems too similar to Barkley 2, I guess I could remove it but it would really hinder gameplay. I would have included it in SFRPG: 2, but it was nearly impossible to do properly in RPG Maker XP--being a tile-based engine by default. The same goes for the dialog trees--those who played SFRPG 2 would know that I attempted to do them during the faction quest-lines but again, it was difficult to do in RPG Maker and took way too much time. The game is just as focused on melee combat as it is on ranged combat. I just think it's boring so I haven't uploaded any videos of it.

Perhaps I'm always doomed to be viewed as a Barkley rip-off. The irony of that really bothers me, by the way.

Ah so it's like a ripoff of Barkley shut up and jam, that's pretty cool.

Explain.

I'm pretty sure I began work on my game before they even announced Barkley 2 and Shaq Fu RPG 2 was a party-based, action-RPG that I released last year around this time. Unless you consider mouse-based combat a ripoff of Barkley RPG (which is really the only addition I made to the battle-system), I don't really follow you. If anything, it's a ripoff of Diablo 2.

I'm not sure if you're just being ironic, but I take great offense to that.

Also, the majority of Shaq Fu RPG was completed between 2002 - 2005 and included well-known trolls around Gamefaqs/the Shaq Fu Genesis board. In fact, I had to waybackmachine Shaqfu.org in order to recover content from a lost demo from 2004. This game takes place on the Second World--just like my two previous games did and share the same goofy lore without using lame homophobic jokes every two seconds.

I was making up the demo for Bigger Riggers, when I saved over my file for the entire Bigger Riggers project! Since I had eliminated un-needed levels and frames to conserve space, that means I won't be able to work on them anymore (unless I recreate them, which will set me back weeks or more).

Is there any way to retrieve a previous save of a Multimedia Fusion 2 project? I tried System Restore, but none of the recent save states for System Restore would work.

Now I am hoping this is just a horrible nightmare!

Would it help if I uploaded my copy of Bigger Riggers that you sent me to test? I've never used Multimedia Fusion 2.

The funniest aspect of that photo is that (unless the uniforms have changed) the "black attire" represents Taco Bell management. And a fine job he's doing if I do say so myself. Viral marketing at its best.

Taco Bell: We personally taste-test each and every #tacoshell with our fetid tongues to ensure consumer satisfaction. thank you and please come again.

Looks like a huge amount of points to distribute every time you level up. Perhaps a button which increases your stats in increments of 10 would be better?

Yeah, that video (spending a stat-point increases a primary statistic by one) isn't an accurate representation of the system in its current form. Currently, the system works exactly as you're describing except for the fact that primary stats increase in increments of 5 for each click while decreasing available stat-points by 5. HP and MP still increase by 3 for each point spent. With two party members, you'll only have to perform 20 clicks or so unless you dump all available points into HP and/or MP.

I should have show-cased this in the video, but if you hold down the left mouse button, stat-points will rapidly distribute (the script that is performed when you increase a primary statistic by left-clicking will repeat every tenth of a second until you release the left-click).

Hopefully that will reduce some of the tediousness. Another major issue I'm running into concerns game balance. For example, if you dump a poo pooload of points into willpower, you'll regenerate mana so fast that it becomes impossible to run out. Then again, taking advantage of certain over-powered game mechanics in Morrowind was enjoyable to me. I haven't decided whether I should nerf willpower or leave it alone. Stell's Undying hand and Pandora's Cargo are also two very overpowered spells (they function almost identically to Sphere of Chaos and Finger of Death in Baldur's Gate 2). While it works well in an Infinity Engine game, being able to rapidly cast those spells in an ARPG becomes overwhelmingly devastating.

EDIT: The spell Time Stop is also very powerful even with a 10 second cool-down. That will definitely have to be nerfed in some way.

Seriously though, Diceman always made me laugh when I'd lurk here occasionally (need to do it more often time is no excuse) and it's odd that he would up and leave. Like the wise Bjorno once said YW.com -- blood in blood out. ride or die my riggers.